Tuesday, 3 March 2015

In the
false-dawn twilight
a rider enquired of a
passer-by:Where is
the house of my friend?
The sky paused
The passer-by held a
branch of lightwhich brushed
the dark sand

He pointed to an
aspen:
before you reach that tree
turn off at the
garden
path
that leads
into a space more green
than any god could
dream
and go down that
path
as far as the wings
of
honesty can reach

Continue beyond
the end
of the first part of your life
and then turn again
take two steps
toward
a flower that grows untendedalone
at the base of a
fountainwhence springs the second part of your life
stop and you will be
swallowed up
by fear
transparent as water

In the closeness of
the
space that flows
something rustles
in
one of the surrounding pines
a child has climbed
to pluck a
young bird
from a nest made of
light
and you call out to
that
child

Where is the house of my friend?

Where Is
the House of My Friend? (After Sohrab Sepehri): TC, 2009/2015

stiil from Where Is the Friend's House, dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1987

Sohrab Sepehri: Neshâni (Address)

still from Where Is the Friend's House, dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1987 (image via Poemas del Rio Wang, 28 December 2009)

New York, US. A worker cleans the snow from the pavement in Midtown Manhattan as snow falls again in the city: photo by Timothy A. Clary/AFP via The Guardian, 2 March 2015You
see that, Sara? Just like Sheldon and Shmuley promised! Ticker tape
blizzard on the limo ride to AIPAC already!? You called it, babe! And
all for us! Plus the hotel bottle deposits!

And you know it's supposed to be a secret that Bibi has plenty of nuclear capability of his own, instantly at his disposal -- a Los Alamos technician was fired for saying so, but did anybody ever have doubts?

The casual disrespect he and his team on the ground bestowed upon, in particular, Obama and Susan Rice -- odd coincidence, both schwarzes, and you know those apartheid believers are famously colour blind -- must qualify the Beebster as the rudest guest ever.

When his team and the Christian right are singing the same song, no one dare utter a peep, because, we're meant to know, names are being taken.

Not that art matters overmuch in such a world, but if it's creative capabilities that were to define power, the cinema of Iran would qualify it as a superpower.

In reality, meanwhile, the dogged and resolute Israeli approach to dealing with people who make you nervous -- that is, eliminate them altogether -- which has been seen with Gaza as well as Iran, sets one to thinking of how that strategy has worked in the past.

Having a whole people hate you, and having their children hate you, and their children's children, can't be a restful thing, so that the leap of purpose from merely resenting an opponent to entirely obliterating them becomes, by a strange logic, inevitable -- and how better effect the deed than have somebody else not only finance it but carry it out, under the aegis of Operation Running Sore, or whatever name is picked this time.

By the by, is it just me, or does Sabzian, the non-actor whose haunting performance in Close-Up is so real it's hardly a performance at all, not bear a striking resemblance to the Sohrab Sepehri we have seen in photographs??